ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180103
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
The Rev. James Abner Allison Jr., who, as chairman of the Roanoke School Board, lived out his conviction that Christians should try to make the world better, died Wednesday in a Salem hospital.
Allison, 71, was minister of Raleigh Court Presbyterian Church for 31 years, from 1960 to 1991. He was the second pastor of the church, which organized in 1926.
He was born in Richlands and reared by his grandparents in the Draper area of Pulaski County. After attending Virginia Military Institute, he saw duty in the Army Infantry in World War II, although by 1945, he had not seen combat.
He graduated from VMI and proceeded to Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, an institution with a northern Presbyterian outlook.
Allison said, ``I made that decision [to go to a seminary outside the South] because I expected my ministry to make two important decisions - to support racial integration, and reunion of the southern and northern branches of the Presbyterian Church.''
Throughout his career, he stood strongly by both decisions.
At the seminary, he met Margaret Anderson of New Jersey, a student of Christian education. In 1951, they became the first married couple at the seminary to complete studies together.
After a second military tour in the United States, this time as a chaplain during the Korean conflict, Allison went to the historic Old Stone Presbyterian Church in Augusta County. From there, he came to Roanoke.
A church activist, Allison championed human rights; one of his early appearances before Roanoke City Council was to ask that the old Washington Park landfill be closed because it offended blacks living nearby. The dump, Allison said, ``is a perpetuation of a gross injustice.''
In 1968, Allison was named president of the Roanoke Valley Ministers Conference in a year that climaxed church unrest because of different viewpoints on black militancy, the peace movement and changing family values.
He was awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Hampden-Sydney College in 1974.
Allison consistently voted for change, expressing the view that the church must be responsive to social issues.
In 1979, as his children finished their schooling in Roanoke, Allison accepted appointment to the School Board. Soon after he joined, he said ``Government involvement is an instrument of God.'' He also said that, since childhood, he had been a student of government and its effect on human justice.
He later was appointed School Board chairman and served a total of six years.
Lewis Nelson, who served with Allison on the School Board, said Wednesday that Allison ``kept a level head in situations that could have been emotional. He always showed compassion for the underprivileged.
``He was a prince of a fella,'' Nelson said.
- Staff report
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB